#Because if her passive involves something related to Photo mode

[ravenpie52]

With Domicile’s Conclusion:

I’m writing a wrap-up of sorts here, explaining all the lore and background info for the series (and where it might go?) in a fully transparent manner. Don’t read this if you want to puzzle some of it out first after finishing the series. I’m posting the art assets I drew at the bottom too.

Prepare for a long one.

1. Series Lore

First off, the most important thing. Raven is not a true “Player.” I categorize Players as beings separate from mobs that sorta just, appear (though they all have their own backstories). They have a lot of power at their fingertips. They can manipulate the world drastically, travel between worlds, and set up worlds as “hubs” (servers) for others to gather in. The existence of a Player influences the world around them. Worlds are literally made for Players, and can barely exist without them. 

So what happens when a world lacks a Player? Well. Mob AI is fundamentally changed, for one. They do not aggro on beings that aren’t mobs unless provoked. Therefore, all hostile mobs ignore Raven’s existence because they are not recognized as anything worth paying attention to. Things also got messy and the world deferred a sort of “awakening” to those of the highest “power,” Evokers, in order to try and pick up the slack in a way. (Though the world doesn’t have thoughts, I’m just personifying it for ease of explanation.)

Evokers in Raven’s world have a higher “sense of self,” and in doing so took on a fraction of Player abilities (building/exploration/crafting skill and world manipulation). Many of them banded together into the Evoker Collective to try and figure out what’s going on with the world. There are legends of “Players” that all sapient mobs know, and yet....there is no trace of one...

Eventually, one such Evoker got the idea to try and MAKE a Player, or at least, create an entity that could try to fill the void. Enter our dear shapeshifter. Unfortunately, Raven either accidentally killed both their creator and work partner in their eldritchy infancy without realizing, or scared the two off for good. I’m leaving that for others to decide. Thankfully they started learning life lessons from passive mobs and ended up in a village in a form where they were mistaken for an actual Player and could learn about it.

Secondly, in a broken world, the connection between the dimensions is super fragile. This is why Raven didn’t get any dimension-related advancements. They don’t exist. All knowledge regarding the Nether and the mobs within was left vague or nonexistent and Evokers had to figure it out themselves. At most, villagers know of a far off place that is very warm and red. And they know of a hard, purple rock, that when made into an upright square...does something... Only Evokers actually ended up getting there.

When it comes to the End, that’s a complete mystery, though they did find a stronghold containing a portal. Unfortunately, they didn’t know enough about Endermen (named “Warpers” instead) to figure out the whole deal with the frame.

There is no Enderdragon. With no Player to defeat her, she does not exist, nor do her pillars, her crystals, or her egg. And with no dragon to defeat, there are no End Cities. The only thing that exists is the anchor point, the bedrock fountain.

IN COME CYAN AND GREEN: residents of The Liminal, the space between worlds and dimensions. You know that dirt screen you see whenever Minecraft is loading, showing an error message, looking through options, playing the credits, etc.? That’s a place. You can fully enter it only after hopping into the fountain the first time in a world. All those other times you’re kinda just a blip. 

It’s implied in my custom End Poem that it is possible to acclimate yourself to The Liminal better and eventually stay there without being pulled away. Furthermore, it is being said that Raven has the possibility to join the ranks of Cyan and Green since Raven’s also somewhat detached from the universe (due to being made from its own cracks). However, that will take, like, hundreds to thousands of years.

Cyan and Green gave Raven a boon after being impressed by their ability to be, well, a person. They gave them the knowledge and ability to world-hop, like Players, so Raven can now go to other worlds as well as servers and isn’t stuck in a broken one, hooray! All the other worlds they visit will be actually made for Non-mob Beings, so there’s proper mob aggro, regular dimension stuff, etc. There’s gonna be a violent few lessons Raven’s gonna have to learn fast. Good thing the other ability that Cyan and Green gave Raven was the ability to respawn in other worlds. Yep! Raven was unknowingly in hardcore mode this whole time and didn’t realize there was anything different!

Despite getting a slight power boost, Raven is still unable to shapeshift properly. They can only get forms slightly right. They worked really hard to maintain their zombie mimicry at this level of finesse (even if it isn’t perfect), so they’re unlikely to change shape unless it’s necessary or accidental. People are more receptive to Raven in this form, after all. This is my excuse for why Raven doesn’t shapeshift in-game at any time....there are no mods for this.

2. Out of Character Stuff

Here’s a previous OOC post I made regarding some of the filming stuff.

Domicile was always meant to be Raven’s backstory. It’s something I could point to when people might go: “What’s their story?” It was just for fun, but I put a lot of work into it, and it has felt very rewarding. For example, I’d been trying to figure out how to present the flashback of episode 6 and the custom End Poem for episode 7 for aaaages and getting those all settled has been great.

If you’re wondering why I have silent moments for montages in my videos and didn’t see the answer anywhere else, there were times where it just didn’t work out to use the webcam microphone I was borrowing, or said microphone messed up the audio (I’m FINALLY getting a replacement mic in a few weeks). At a certain point I decided it was a feature to have montages with only in-game sounds. Like, asmr or something.

None of the mods I installed changed generation. Everything that looks different from vanilla I made happen in creative mode. I made the mini-mansion in the roofed forest, the temple topper and stairs for the stronghold, fixed up Hometown to be nicer, and got rid of all the obsidian End pillars with creative mode punches. The pillars still stick out of the bottom of the island, I couldn’t be bothered to do that too. ( >3>)

One of my rules for the RP was to keep all knowledge in-universe. Raven had to only know things they could conceivably find out from villagers or their books. (And sometimes they just straight up forgot some of it.) After this, there’s gonna be a time skip where Raven learns a whole bunch of Minecraft basics from faceless Players. So in the future I won’t have to pay quite as much attention to what gets called its proper in-game name or not.

Also I had to hold back from singing any real life song lyrics to myself and I couldn’t give anything a name that alludes to our world. The orange tower is called Traffic Cone in my head but Raven can only call it a tower. That sort of thing I can be way more lenient with from now on.

I want to make future RP content with my character, but I have no friends who are fitting that particular niche to roleplay with me for a multiplayer series. I’m keeping an eye out for potential roleplay servers and such for outside of video RP. But at this point, I think that if I am to make a multiplayer video series, I’m gonna have to wait for someone to approach me with an offer. 

Though, I’m still gonna post art of the character here, no doubt.

By the way, since this is working as an archive of sorts, here’s the link for the written piece that started me on the track to making the series. I’m thinking of changing the canon time Raven spent wandering around the tundra thinking they were a mob to be a bit while longer than a day.

More stuff involving my Minesona can be found under the #Domicile tag, but later I’m just gonna tag all new stuff as just #minesona.

3. Art Assets

Here are the assets I made for the videos, excluding the blurry picture of the Evokers, that one’s kinda not worth much, lol. I’ve posted the first two elsewhere, but thought this would be a good archive.

The thumbnail:

The title card:

Raven falling from The Liminal, losing their form a bit after Green and Cyan’s influence and Raven’s emotional bewilderment:

(You can really tell that I loosely traced a reference photo of someone falling, lol. I have no shame, this pose rocks.)

For fun, here’s the skin I use! I didn’t make it, but I’ve used it for years, so it’s me now. >:) 

Here’s the Skindex link.

Once again, thank you all so much for anyone who watched the series. Every view means a lot to me. I’m so happy that people watched my stuff and liked it. Thanks for reading this! <3

[digitalsuckerpunch-blog]

Videos vs. Images: Which Drives More Engagement in Facebook Ads?

Which performs better on Facebook–images or video? Here’s what 26 marketers say works best as two of the foremost popular Facebook ad formats go head-to-head.

62% of marketers find Facebook to be the foremost important social media channel for his or her business–yet content organically posted to Facebook Pages only reach about 16% of fans. This is why numerous brands advertise on Facebook. Not only to succeed in more of their following but to succeed in the larger market, too.

But, a bit like any ad campaign , crafting an efficient Facebook ad that really reaches your audience isn’t luck–it’s the results of testing.

From ad creative to call-to-action copy, it all needs careful consideration (and testing) so as to maximise the potential of each campaign.

And when it involves ad creative, the image–and more recently the video–is often the star of the show. But, is another effective than the other?

We wanted to drill down and see whether image-based ads are still driving engagement, or whether emerging video trends have impacted the success rate of video-based Facebook ads.

The results were (almost) evenly split, as 52% of the marketers who responded say they leverage video more so than images, and therefore the remaining 48% said the other .

image vs. text: most-used for facebook ads But surprisingly, almost 60% of these marketers said video tends to drive more engagement:

images vs. text: most clicks Audi Westmont‘s Laura Gonzalez is one among those marketers who prefers video-based ads: “Even though images still drive traffic and clicks, providing video gives users more insight into who you're as a brand.”

As does Alex Vdovenko of Down the Hatchet, who says: “We’ve done some testing with both video and pictures , and video continues to figure best. We create short videos of individuals throwing axes at our location, et al. immediately want to observe and click on thereon . This continues to figure well for us as we keep switching ad creatives over time.”

But why do videos tend to perform better? These marketers one strong theory.

“Video content far and away generates more engagements with our users”, says Taylor Hurff of 1SEO I.T. Support & Digital Marketing, who believes the advantages boil right down to the very fact “videos force scrolling users to prevent and pay an additional second of attention to the post before understanding the gist.”

He says: “As consumers, we’ve gotten better at digesting content while scrolling, making it easier to scroll through images without giving the posts the time of day. With videos, you inherently have an additional second to grab the user’s attention. Capitalizing on this with engaging video content to back it up is vital .”

James Marques of Iconic Genius agrees: “In most cases, people can digest a photograph during a second or two. A video grabs more attention and causes people to focus more on the video.”

*Editor’s note: Need a simple thanks to track and visualize which Facebook ad campaigns are performing best? Grab this free template and see which campaigns are performing best, and more importantly, which specific ads are driving low CPCs and seeing high impressions.

Do video-based ads actually work? It’s all well and good to understand the justification behind video-based Facebook ads performing well.

But you would like to understand what ‘well’ means–and whether the results they’re generating are going to be on-par (or beat!) those you’re already seeing, right?

These three businesses have seen incredible results from their video-based campaigns.

A 2x increase in clicks Malin Wijenayake, a Paid Ads Specialist on the team at seoplus+, says: “Video ads typically trump image ads in terms of engagement”.

…So much in order that “in one particular case for one among our fitness-related clients, a picture ad for a product received 777 link clicks, whereas a video for an equivalent product received 1432 link clicks — almost double.”

An increase of conversions by 20-30% ClearPivot‘s Chantelle Stevenson is another marketer raving about the results video-based ads have generated.

Stevenson says: “We have found that videos exponentially drive clicks over images when it involves Facebook ads. […] we've found our clients to possess 20 to 30% more conversions when utilizing video over images when it involves Facebook ads.”

A boost of CTR by 2-3x Remember how we discussed the idea behind video-based ads?

William Carrillo of Ledger Bennett doesn’t think it’s solely right down to the very fact videos attract more attention during a crowded feed.

Carrillo thinks it’s because “Facebook as a corporation , is pushing to be a video-first platform and sometimes prioritizes video assets to align thereupon mindset. Facebook traffic is 90-95% mobile and vertical video formats leave far more land on the screen than horizontal videos. this enables for more visibility and better opportunity to supply a click.”

Since actively testing the difference between video and static images, he says: “The findings showed that video assets drove an 11% higher conversion rate than statics.”

But if that wasn’t already ok , William explains: “Not only did video drive stronger conversion, but also generated the foremost efficient cost per lead, and 75% of the general click volume. this is often also consistent in customer engagement campaigns. Throughout various iterations and tests with my client, we found that videos consistently drove 2-3x higher CTRs than statics.”

A CTR increase of 47% Cardinal Digital Marketing‘s Alex Membrillo is another marketer who’s seen an increase in CTR with video ads.

“For a recent A/B test for a client within the travel and tourism industry, we found that with all other factors being an equivalent , the Video Ads generated a 47% higher CTR, despite Facebook generating a better Reach (i.e. Impressions) for the Image-based Ad,” Membrillo says.

“Additionally, we found that the CTR from people that viewed the video was over 10 times greater than people that saw the ad but didn't view the video.”

Fancy getting into on the action? Here is advice from eight marketers, who share how you'll maximize the videos you’re creating to ascertain similar results.

1. Keep it simple “I have noticed that videos which are short (less than a minute) and use subtitles or text overlays tend to figure better,” Shafi Khan of Optiux Marketing explains.

Khan says: “Videos with texts helps the ad watchers understand about the product/service being promoted and convinces them to click to understand more. If we pass the numbers, videos bring 20 percent more clicks than the image and also features a multi-fold share count.”

2. Use subtitles We Accelerate Growth‘s Conner King agrees with Shafi’s advice to “keep videos ads not 3 minutes (4 at a push)”, but he also recommends to “use subtitles where possible” because “the avg. person has there phone volume set to low / off”.

(He’s right: It’s expected that 85% of all video content uploaded to Facebook is watched without sound.)

3. Show something unique Take a wild guess on volume Facebook content you’re competing with. I’ll bet your answer is “somewhere within the millions��–and you’re right.

To date, Facebook users have remodeled 2.5 trillion posts–making tons of noise on the platform.

But Srish Agrawal of Infographic Design Team thinks that ought to be your motivation, instead of an obstacle, to make video-based Facebook ads: “Most people on Facebook are just rapidly scrolling through updates, so you would like to form a video that's very visually appealing within the primary few seconds, and makes them want to stay watching.”

Srish says: “For Facebook Ads, we’ve definitely seen far better results with video ads. From what we’ve experienced, you would like to form them short and crowd pleasing .”

4. Target TOFU audiences Chances are, you’re targeting different audiences together with your Facebook ads.

And by that, I don’t just mean people with different interests; I mean people lingering at different stages within the marketing funnel:

marketing funnel for facebook ads Carma Levene, who forms a part of the team at Carma The Social Chameleon, says video ads should be targeting people towards the highest of the funnel because “video will potentially get more clicks on the ad (people clicking to play, tagging a lover , etc.) but definitely in my experience a lower CTR.”

Levene says: “I put it right down to the very fact that you’re asking people to observe a video – they’re passive video watchers. they could remember your brand and have a passing interest but they don’t have a high intent to try to to anything that while they’re in video watching mode.”

“That’s one among the explanations it’s so effective to use Video at the highest of the funnel – you'll separate the longer watchers as having a better intent and retarget them with other ad formats to assist more [move] them down the funnel.”

Jackie Kossoff also uses this approach: “In my opinion, the extent of user action required by a billboard matches the engagement level of the ad medium. Attending a webinar or event may be a high-engagement call to action, which matches the high-engagement medium of video. Likewise, a quiz or PDF download may be a lower-level call to action, which matches the lower engagement level of images.”

Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers summarizes perfectly: “[…] Videos are better for views, engagement (Likes and comments) but images are literally better for clicks. People will watch videos and spend longer watching your ads but images are more easily scannable. When scrolling, people will decide within 3 seconds if they need to click your photo ads whereas it'll take them longer when it involves videos.”

In the end, the sort of video you’re creating depends massively on the people viewing it.

5. Retarget video viewers Are you following Carma’s advice and using Facebook video ads to focus on TOFU audiences?

Two of our marketers say you'll maximize those results even further–and nurture those video viewers until they convert into customers–by retargeting them with future campaigns.

“Also, through video ads, you'll create audiences supported the engagement that that they had together with your video”, explains Gray Group International‘s Violeta Morales, because “this is very useful for retargeting purposes.”

Here’s Paul Fairbrother of AdEspresso explaining how he puts that into practice: “I use a 10-second video view audience supported the last 7 days and retarget them with an immediate response ad, preferably including a suggestion .”

Is there still space for image-based Facebook ads? At one point, Facebook image ads were all-the-rage.

“There was a period of your time (when videos were new on Facebook) where videos drove more clicks for me”, says The Advisor Coach‘s James Pollard.

However, Pollard now reports “that effect has died off and pictures are now driving more clicks”–something he thinks is because “an image has more potential to supply a pattern interrupt to urge an individual to prevent scrolling and concentrate .”

Referencing a survey done by Visual Objects, Clutch.co‘s Kristen Herhold backs this up: “Next to offers/promotions, images are the highest content type to influence people to click on a link on social media. Images are presumably to influence 25 percent of individuals to click through to an internet site from social media. Videos are third, at 16 percent. Videos are still a successful content type, but images are more successful at driving clicks.”

visual-objects-research Evan Roberts of Dependable Homebuyers may be a marketer using Facebook image ads, after discovering that “most people scroll quickly through their Facebook feeds on their mobile device. this suggests that we are only given a fraction of a second to grab the eye of a possible home seller once they scroll past our ad.”

But here’s the important question: Why is he favoring image over beloved video-based ads?

Evan says: “With video, this is often not enough time to make a compelling call to action, but with images, we've more control over what's shown to the client which gives us a far better chance of converting a click.”

The time investment for video vs. image ads Cardswitcher‘s Christopher Fear thinks “images will work better for a few approaches and videos for a few approaches.”

Yet Fear continues to mention something really interesting:

“Whilst videos are often better for driving clicks and engagement they're often more labor intensive to make , taking an extended time to craft into something usable and requiring a reasonably high level of investment.”

…We wanted to understand whether that was the case for other advertisers, so we dug deeper. Our survey found the bulk of video-based Facebook ads take between 2-6 hours to produce:

how long to make a video-based facebook ad? Whereas an image-based ad, on the opposite hand, took but an hour:

how long to make an image-based facebook ad? “We only run image based Facebook ads, just because of how little time it takes to make and test multiple image ads,” says Sam Schuler of Instasize.

However, Schuler adds: “If video production was more streamlined or we had a backlog of video content that would be formatted for Facebook ads, we definitely would, but currently the time it takes to make video content for ads outweighs the conversion rate benefit.”

Video vs. image ads: Which works for your audience? If you’ve reached now and are still confused on which sort of Facebook ad will work, don’t panic.

The majority of our marketers have a preference–but we've a couple of seasoned advertisers who advise you to require a deeper check out your business, product or services before deciding.

“Between video vs image ads, it definitely depends on the product/service you're promoting”, says SL Development‘s Afshan Santi.

“The best thanks to determine which drives more click activity is thru testing both against one another . We do that by keeping the text & call to action an equivalent & changing only the creative type (image vs video). This creates a controlled test & helps to optimize for the simplest click/conversion activity.”

Isabella Federico of Webizz agrees–answering “it depends” when asked which format drives the foremost clicks: “Behind any creative strategy there must be a compelling product or an excellent idea. Both targeted to the proper audience.”

Here’s the method Isabella uses to spot potential audiences: “We can use a stimulating Facebook feature to return out with the simplest ad creative (video or image) for them: the Facebook Split Testing Tool. This feature allows you to make A/B test not just for ads, but also for audiences, placements and delivery. this manner you'll identify the simplest creative for a selected audience.”

Jesse Särmö of Advance B2B agrees with both Isabella and Afshan, explaining why split-testing campaign creatives may be a fantastic idea:

“In the top , you can’t say directly which drives more clicks. It really depends on the content. we've cases where images perform better and cases where video perform better. It’s all about testing what works with different campaigns and with different targeting.”

You don’t need to stop there, though.

Ampmycontent‘s Daniel Daines-Hutt summarizes with a thought to repurpose video while split-testing: “It can take hours to make a video ad, not including testing any different variations. What do I recommend? Test and find a winning image ad–test the copy, CTA, etc.–then turn it into video and see how it performs.”

There is no definitive answer As you'll see, the road between image and video-based Facebook ads can get pretty blurry.

But no matter which format generates the foremost clicks, Kent Raju, author of The Trick of Advertising, says you’ll got to double-check the clicks you’re encouraging are from the proper people.

Raju says: “You want people to require a selected action on your website, not just traffic. And since you're paying for every click on the image or video, you better confirm there are as few clicks by the incorrect audience as possible. Five high-quality clicks are always better than 5000 low-quality clicks.”

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[iwishiwasabigstrawberry-blog]

Fandom as audience in popular culture (blog#3)

This last blog will also discuss fandom of K-pop stars and how they act in the digital world. There will be four sections in this blog, first, there will be examples about media rituals in my family and how I react differently in context as home and concert, then I will introduce few narrative styles of fanfictions and other production of fans as they engage with the media texts. This section also related to the left two following,  I will connect fans as SME and try to describe how they interact with each other. At last, going back to the first blog I will again argue that audiences are active and in charge of the media.

Reception contexts and media rituals

Sullivan argued that “Television continues to be the most important and widely used media technology in the domestic context. The introduction of new media technologies has not fundamentally altered the amount of television use in the home” (p. 171) Because my father is always busy, in my childhood memory I always watched TV with my mother. However, there was a period when I got my new smartphone and became more willing to spend time on that rather than stay with my mother on the sofa. For now, because I study in Canada, me and my mom shared our lives with each other through WeChat, such as what we eat that day and what drama we were watching at that time. I still remember that when I started to watch Breaking Bad and recommended her to watch, but she watched faster than me and there was one day she called me for spoiler. Because of that, I didn’t watch season 5 till now. I became a fan of BTS in the summer back to China and watch a TV show with her, and BTS’s song was BGM of that show. And II searched that song and learned more about them while sharing with my mother. Even she became an “army” as well. She even can repost things on Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter) about BTS and @ me recently. I went to 2017 Beijing concert of BTS with my friends who is also an “army” and we knew each other on BTS’s fan BBS. As we travel we watched their program shows together.  It is different when watch it by myself and when someone set beside me, we laugh out loud some of the jokes they made. Because we should be quite on the KTX, we tried so hard to hold back the laugh which made us laugh even harder. “Differences between theater and home viewing are screen size, image quality, audio quality of the theater, viewing condition, and cheering atmosphere” (Kim, 392) I could feel it in the concert that day, within the Cheering Atmosphere, which we all sang with them and that added realism to the viewing experience. I cried in that moment, it was the first time that I felt that they are not only some people in my electronic devices, there are right there in front my face. My tears would be physiological responses, and when BTS said “how are you?” in Chinese, we all screamed which made every “army” felt involved can be an example of immersion. As a Fan, I like to see BTS in their concert rather than setting in my room watching iPad. There is no wonder why people say “fans will never forget their first concert”.

Fandom and audience subcultures

In this section, I would explain fandom on a continuum with my own experience of being an “army” as consumer, enthusiast, fan, and producer. When I first knew BTS in the TV show, I was a consumer paying attention to their music. After that, I started to download all their albums and watch their MV on YouTube again and again, at this stage I was an enthusiast. Regard the four positions as Sullivan argued that “fan audiences are deeply engaged in their favorite media text. And fans often reinterpret media content and create their own culture.” (p. 193)  Then, as I turned into a fan of them, I started to get information about each member. “This ‘Spimatic’ appreciation of the process of fandom highlights changing paradigms of fan viewership as a form of participatory culture” (Booth, 2015, p. 151) In this stage I watch their MV not only because I like but also for increasing their view, as I said in the second blog, these numbers are rating which reflects how much attention they get. According to Sullivan, “The difference between watching a [television] series and becoming a fan lies in the intensity of their emotional and intellectual involvement” (p. 198) As a fan, I feel emotionally involved with them, especially when they won awards and get famous I feel so proud and I feel upset when people say something bad about them. It can be in a wrong way when fans get so emotional that they think that there is some relationship between them and their idols which beyond just fandom. There is a group of fan called 사생팬(Sasaeng Fan), this word came from Korean fandom that refers fans who are so over-obsessive that has engaged in stalking or other behavior that constitutes an invasion of privacy. Once BTS when to Europe and chased by Sasaeng Fans for hours. These crazy fans still just a few of fans, most active fans make their own fan-made products such as MV reaction and MV analysis which I mentioned on the last blog. There is also a YouTuber who does “0 budget version of BTS’s MV” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=629fMYD6RC4

So hilarious! I am a producer as well, I and my friends sometimes record our dance cover videos of K pop groups and post them online. I also wrote fan fiction when I was in junior high, I like SHINee and I wrote bromance between two of SHINee’s members. I post my fanfictions on BBS, where lots of other fans write theirs.  When fans do fanfictions what we usually do is called “Recontextualization”, which means “short stories or “missing scenes” that fill in gaps in the existing media text (TV program, film, etc.)” and “expanding the timeline”, which means “Explores characters’ backgrounds or rewrites unpopular endings to the existing media narrative” (Sullivan, 205) Take BTS as an example, there is a scene in Run MV that Suga and Jungkook is having fight with each other. In fanfictions, they add plot as Suga’s girlfriend left him and Jungkook wanted to cheer him up because Jungkook loves Suga as well. But it didn’t go well, they had a big fight and Suga left all the other members. Some wrote that they were having a fight because Suga wants to leave Jungkook, at the end, Jungkook lets go of Suga and send him to Jimin’s side, and he goes to another country for healing his broken heart. 

There is another style of narrative called personalization, in this style fans write themselves into the narratives.  I know a Weibo account which specifically posts love stories between “I” and members of BTS. I followed it without telling anyone, some of the stories are well wrote so that I really feel like I am in relationship with them.

Besides, like I said in blog 1 and 2, “army” also write theory to explain what happened in their MV, here are two article they wrote about Run and I need U MV.

https://thebangtantheory.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/bts-run-explained/

https://k-pop.aminoapps.com/page/blog/bts-prologue-i-need-u-run-epilogue-theory/DYIP_ue6LYxrYBnB1bZM33BoxM2PR

When fans connect two or more of the media texts together, that are “crossovers” which means “blurring boundaries between distinct media texts; introducing characters from one media narrative into another”(Sullivan, 205).

 Fandom in a digital media world

This section will focus on fandom’s behaviors on Twitter because of its uniqueness and suitability for audience interaction.  Since I am from China so that I don’t know much about Twitter so I would go with Weibo, which is basically the same thing. It indeed proves the development of technology now people can get on the internet so easy. “In general, most SMEs are young, tech-savvy, and geared towards the tech world.” (Wasike, p. 19) SME here refers to social media editors, they can be loosely defined as “tech-savvy journalists appointed by news agencies to act as the newsroom liaisons to the digital world, also called the social media sphere… Specifically, their main functions are: to monitor the social media sphere for latest trends; to procure relevant material for editors; to maintain the organization’s online presence; to interact with the readers and to post news articles online.” (Wasike, p6) Fans can also be seen as SME as they giving and tracking the latest movement of their idols on the social media, such as me. I live in Canada but they are in Korea so that I need to search them on the internet and get information about them, there are people in Korea who have time can take pictures or videos of them and post on social media for us. Because “army” are all around the world, we keep on-line mode for anything new. Also, we can interact with each other by comment under other’s post and reply, I even know one of my friends on Weibo. As Sullivan said, “media audiences today have come to expect the ability to provide instant feedback to media producers and to other audiences.” As audiences become an integral part of the media production apparatus itself,  there appear a lot of “prosumers” who are consumers and producers at the same time. As for me, to go along with the point of the last section. I consume BTS’s media production on the internet such as music, MV and photos then inspired by the lyrics and writing reviews on the internet. Other “army” will find my reviews from #BTS so that we can have conversations with them.  During this process, I can be seen as a free labor of promoting BTS.

I also find that there is a BTS emoji on Twitter! 

Passive or active?

In the textbook Sullivan had explored the concept of media audiences from multiple perspectives: as objects of media influence, as quantified constructions of institutions, as active users, and as subcultures and media producers, the word “audience” seems not as much as the meaning as before. According to Astigarraga, “Thanks to the digitalization of television

and the expansion of broadband internet, the supply of contents has multiplied exponentially,

and the fragmentation of the audience is such that some authors suggest that the term “audience” (understood as a collective of people and not as the sum of individuals) should be abandoned as an ‘outdated’ concept” (p,133) We now use electronic devices such as smartphones which can be seen as a collection of many different kinds of  devices. For example, I can not only call and text people through my phone, I can also watch BTS’s MV in YouTube APP and even write a blog about BTS on my phone. Different from the past, audiences not just set in front of the TV and receive the messages in TV passively, it is normal that people search character’s name or discuss plots on the internet while watching TV. Example of this in Fandom will be live shows, fans can interact with their idols right away. It also brings up the question that because of how fast can the internet be. I said in the previous blogs that star system updated so fast to catch up with the flavor of fans, any other news can also be forgotten quickly. Recently, there was a severe criminal case in China that explore in Weibo, people start to get information and talk about this case. Then after about two weeks, people’s attention moved to a female celebrity who cuts her hair. We indeed can choose what we want to look or produce on the internet actively, however, with the change of the network environment, people are changing too.

 References

Astigarraga, I., Pavon, A., & Zuberogoitia, A. (2016). Active audience?: Interaction of young people with television and online video content.   Communication and Society, 29(3), 133‐147.

Booth, P. (2105). Crowdfunding: A spimatic application of digital fandom. New Media and Society, 17(2), 149-166.

Kim, K., Cheong, Y., & Kim, H. (2016).  The influences of sports viewing conditions on enjoyment from watching televised sports: An analysis of the FIFA World Cup audiences in theater vs. home.  Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 60(3), 389–409.

Sullivan, J. L. (2012). media audiences: Effects, users, institutions, and power. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE publications.

Wasike, B. (2013).  Framing news in 140 Characters: How social media editors frame the news and interact with audiences via Twitter.   Global Media Journal ‐ Canadian Edition, 6(1), 5‐ 23.